Hi,
I'd be interested to learn which online solutions you would recommend for safely collecting documents from clients?
I'm aware of Dropbox and Box.net, and also the more practice-focused solutions such as DocSafe, Lucey and PracticeWeb's SDE.
We are building partnerships in this area and would like to know if you would recommend these solutions or if there are others I am unaware of?
Thanks in advance.
Regards,
Michael
Director, Receipt Bank
Replies (8)
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Alternative Cloud Solutions
There are a lot more solutions available in the market. The solutions that you mentioned are typically for file transfer or file sharing. We came across one such solution called Zukmo which offers number of additional services which are really helpful for the corporates. If you are planning to become a cloud service reseller, SyncBlaze is the only option which is reliable. We can also recommend various other solutions too but these are the ones we currently use and are satisfied.
Mike
Technology Consultant
Additional question to consider
How are any of these services effected by EU data protection laws?
I imagine that a number of them hold their data outside the EU and stricltly speaking anyone using them would have to take appropriate steps to safeguard the content.
Does anyone have a view or have any of the providers addressed this?
Paul Kelly
Whole file sharing/storage area subject to change ..
No-one seems to have made the absolute distinction between storage & file sharing because essentially products such as Dropbox etc. can easily cater for both aspects.
Nevertheless, file sharing/storage will probably be subject to considerable change over the next few years as more countries target ISP file sharing
The aim is to stop piracy but inevitably other areas such as document depositories (i.e. Dropbox) may be caught in the fallout.
So the question is - what level of risk assessment has one determined about these Cloud sites and define the impact if they were shut down once you had used them as your backup medium?
Of course no one quite knows what closing down one of the sites means but if all your backups were located in the Cloud, can you retrieve your material if they are closed - if not they may be problems?
References:
http://www.zeropaid.com/news/95603/new-zelands-illegal-file-sharing-law-takes-effect/
More general - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Online_Piracy_Act
Online document storage.
Michael, EU data protection laws may have a bearing on your own service (which looks interesting by the way). We have links with docSAFE (www.doc-safe.co.uk) as it is very oriented to the requirements of the accountancy profession.
Docs from clients
Have you considered using none of the above. I recently got my website redesigned and had my own document store built in. I can now give clients a logon and they can upload their files directly to me and I can put files on for them to download.
All works well with a size limit and a restriction on the files that can be uploaded. I log into retrieve stuff direct.
M
Hi Mike
If you want to be sure that your client data is not being replicated globally which many public cloud services do then you could look at a private cloud. We provide IT services both onsite and private cloud to to IFAs and accountants, we have found that a customer portal works well, allowing customers to upload and download their files directly from specified folders on your server. This can be backed up with two factor authentication security if username and password just won't cut it.
David
SpringCM
Check out www.springcm.com. Lots of methods for collecting documents and other content as well as workflow solutions for automating business process.